


On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone

by resident_longwinded_anon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (is that a tag?), Demon!Dean Winchester - Freeform, Kissing, Kissing Booboos Better, M/M, reverse crypt scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resident_longwinded_anon/pseuds/resident_longwinded_anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Cas can think about is the look on Dean’s face - broken and angry and absolutely, chillingly lethal. It’s like nothing he’s seen before, not since he first saw Dean in Hell all those years ago.</p>
<p>If he didn’t know better, he’d say he was dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my Tumblr](http://resident-longwinded-anon.tumblr.com/post/116704604206/on-the-edge-of-the-devils-backbone). A combination of two prompts: [singerofsimplesongs](http://singerofsimplesongs.tumblr.com/) wanted a reverse crypt scene, and a darling anon wanted skinned knees and kisses better.
> 
> Title from The Devil's Backbone by the Civil Wars. ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4KC51M82Xc))
> 
> Warning for a fair bit of violence and a little bit of blood. Could be read as taking place either post-season 8 with a demon possessing Dean, or as a slightly alternate 10.03 wherein Cas stayed human in season 9. There is no Cas/ or Dean/Other in this fic, beyond what is implied by its position in canon.

All Cas can think about is the look on Dean’s face - broken and angry and absolutely, chillingly lethal. It’s like nothing he’s seen before, not since he first saw Dean in Hell all those years ago.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say he was dreaming.

But he’s been human long enough - he’s dreamed often enough - that he can tell the difference between dream pain and real pain. And this? This shattered wailing in the corner of his head, this incoming tide of glass in his heart? This is real.

Dean - the demon can tell he’s hurting. The smile on its face is nothing like Dean’s soft grins, but the glitter in its eyes is the same.

Cas stumbles backwards. He’s running out of room to flee, but moving in any other direction is sure to get him killed. It’s not that he thinks he’d mind dying, so much; he’s done it before, after all. But the thought of Dean waking up with his broken body in his arms - that’s too much to bear.

“Dean,” he pleads, even though whatever creature is in front of him is so far from the man he loves that he’s almost unrecognizable. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me.”

The demon’s grin curves up at one corner like Dean’s cheek is being cut open with a knife. “Oh, he can hear you,” it taunts. “I just wish you could hear him. Begging, pounding against the walls in his head…. Man, he hasn’t screamed like this since Hell.”

Cas bumps into a wall and he looks warily from side to side. He doesn’t recognize the room the demon’s chased him into, but it looks like a mausoleum. The names of old men of letters are carved into slabs of marble, which rest against the walls in piles. The room is unfinished, the floor rough stone and the lightbulbs bare. There’s nowhere to run, but even if there was, he couldn’t leave Dean.

“You heard him in Hell, didn’t you? Screaming his brother’s name, as though someone like that could save him. You were jealous even then, weren’t you? He should have called for you.”

“ _Dean_ ,” he says again. “You’re stronger than this. You’ve faced worse. This is nothing. You can beat this!”

The demon slaps him, hard, across the face, and Cas goes flying. He lands halfway across the room, his hands and knees covered in scrapes. He struggles to get to his feet, but the demon freezes him in place before he’s even on his knees. “He hates you, you know,” it says conversationally. It stalks over to him, places a hand on his shoulder. “He’s so glad I’m doing this.”

“No - he’s - not - ” Cas grinds out through the demon’s energy clenching his jaw shut.

The demon shrugs elaborately. “Well, so you called my bluff. It doesn’t matter.” He twists a hand by his side and Cas rises into the air.

He keeps his body limp; struggling will only make it hurt worse.

The demon flicks its hand and Cas goes smashing face-first into the wall. His lip splits open, and the blood on his tongue tastes like he’s always imagined Dean would.

“Maybe he doesn’t hate you.” Flick. Cas’s forehead splits against the concrete. “Maybe he even likes you.” The demon flips its hand around and lays Cas flat against the floor. It perches over him, trails a possessive hand down his cheek. “Maybe he _loves_ you.”

The demon’s hold on his face muscles is loose enough that it lets him flinch, and it laughs when he does.

“He’s hurting so much right now. Wants you to kill us before he can hurt you. ‘Anyone but Cas,’ he keeps saying. 'Do anything, but don’t make me hurt Cas.’ It’s _hilarious_.”

Cas closes his eyes, but the demon pries them back open with a crook of his finger.

“You’re going to look at me while I kill you, Cas. Dean is going to see the light bleed from your eyes.”

“Is he?” Cas asks. “You’re not even able to touch me.”

The demon’s face grows thunderous. “I don’t need to touch you to kill you.”

“Dean,” Cas says again. “You’ve already beaten him. Just push a little further.”

The demon’s eyes flicker from black to green and back again. “If you say one more word I’ll - ”

“ _Dean_.” Cas can barely move his lips, he can feel the demon’s power reaching down into his throat, going for his vocal chords. “I - _love_ \- you.”

The demon’s eyes flash like a strobe light. Cas is completely spent, can’t do anything but keep his gaze fixed on Dean’s ever-changing eyes.

_You’re mine_ , he thinks. _Mine, not his, never his. I love you, Dean, I love you_.

After an indeterminable amount of time, Dean’s eyes don’t change back from green. “Cas,” he gasps, a single broken breath.

Cas pushes himself upright. “I’m here.”

Dean can’t meet his eyes. “I hurt you. I almost - I tried to kill you.”

“It wasn’t you,” Cas says. “It was never you.”

“But it would have been _my hands_.” He shakes his head. “And the things I _said_ \- ”

“It was taunting us. It didn’t mean anything.”

Dean’s eyes fall closed and he sags against Cas. “But what you said - that meant something, right?”

Cas shifts his weight a little, strokes a hand down Dean’s back. “I love you,” he says again. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve loved you since before I knew love existed. I will never stop loving you.”

“I’m just a waste of your time.”

“No. You’re the only thing that makes time seem real.”

Dean makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You must hate me.”

“ _Never_.”

Dean pulls away, untangles Cas’s hand from his hair. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Love me.” His voice cracks.

“Like breathing. Like bleeding.”

Dean’s face breaks again. “God, Cas.” He leans in and presses a reverential kiss to Cas’s forehead.

Cas feels his skin knit back together beneath Dean’s lips. Dean’s eyes go wide with shock.

“Did I just - what just happened?”

“There’s still some residual power in you, I suppose.”

Dean gives a tired grin and kisses another one of the cuts on Castiel’s face. He kisses down the arc of his cheekbone, and then along his neck.

“Dean - ”

“Shh.” Dean smiles against his skin. “Let me do this.” He pushes gently at the center of Cas’s chest. “Lay back.”

He does.

Dean lifts his hand in the air and trails kisses along his palm, delicate like sugar. His lips sting each cut at first touch, but they stick slightly as they pull away from seamless skin. He can’t stop grinning, and Cas can feel his teeth bumping against his knuckles, but it doesn’t hurt. It feels like prayer.

Dean mirrors the action on Cas’s other palm, and then he moves to his knees and calves, which are peppered with bruises and scraped-away skin. He trails kisses down Castiel’s legs, leaving new skin like a tail of a comet behind him. “I love you so much,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”

When that’s done, he straddles Cas, and creeps back up his body, kissing his stomach, chest, throat. He pauses above his lips for a moment, so Cas surges upward into the kiss. “I love you too, Dean Winchester,” he mutters between breaths. The cut on his lips doesn’t heal - maybe Dean is out of power, or demon magic doesn’t work on lips - but it doesn’t matter. The blood stains both of their mouths cherry red.

Dean tastes better than he ever thought.


End file.
